Editor's Note

The Charge

An adventure for those who seek to find a way to leave their world
behind.

The Case

When the recently orphaned Peter (Bradley Pierce, The Borrowers) and
Judy (Kirsten Dunst, Spider-Man) move
into a huge mansion with their Aunt (Bebe Neuwirth, Cheers), they soon
learn why she got it so cheap. Rumor has it that a boy named Alan Parrish died
in the house, murdered by his father and chopped up into little pieces. One day,
while waiting for the school bus, the kids hear a strange noise coming from the
attic. Turns out it's a board game called Jumanji making the sound, and the kids
decide to play it.

Several strange things happen all at once. The game pieces magically take
their place on the board. Two other pieces are present and will not move. As
they roll the dice, a window in the middle of the game delivers decidedly
sinister messages. Suddenly, a horde of giant mosquitoes appears, then
mischievous monkeys, then a deadly lion. On the next roll, the kids are
confronted by a middle-aged man in jungle gear. It turns out to be Alan (Robin
Williams, Good Will
Hunting), all grown up and finally freed of the game. Seems he sat down to
play it with friend Sarah (Bonnie Hunt, Jerry Maguire) nearly 30 years ago
and ended up getting trapped inside the toy's precarious parallel wilderness
Hell.

Now, the three of them must locate Sarah and finish the game, no matter the
consequences, if they are to rid this world of the devastating effects of
wildlife gone wacky. But they must confront all sorts of dangers, including a
rabid hunter and a stampede of great beasts if they are to win the game and
conquer Jumanji.

When viewed in light of today's modern CGI mechanics, Jumanji is
visually weak and incredibly dated. The monkeys look like midgets in matted fur,
while the digital lion is so stylized that you half expect it to spout
free-verse poetry instead of growls. The movie is so loaded with decidedly dark
elements—man-eating plants, kids in peril, hunters treating humans as
prey, Robin Williams—that one can easily envision a Spielbergesque revamp
with walkie-talkies in place of elephant guns and magic pixies picking up where
oversized spiders once threatened. The result would be a movie with just as much
narrative heft as the overblown board game gone bonkers we get here, and perhaps
it wouldn't feel so weirdly out of time in the process.

The idea of turning Chris Van Allsburg's picture book into a full-blown
kidvid spectacle, complete with complicated plot permutations and overriding
special effects sequences must have seemed like a plausible, if Herculean, task
at the time. With Jurassic Park
eating up box-office receipts like ancillary African-American movie characters,
anything that could be jerry-rigged with some more of that new-magic CGI
specialness was bound to be a greenlit hit. Since Allsburg's image-heavy tome
helped define the idea of the possible story—a game where the jungle
dangers come to real, perilous life—all that was needed was a reason for
the toy to be discovered and a group of characters ready to take up their tokens
and play it.

Unfortunately, the end result is not quite that simple. We don't get people
in Jumanji, we get full-blown people pawns. The backstory with the
bullies and all the familial balderdash doesn't add a great deal of gravitas to
the goings-on. The whole It's
a Wonderful Life undercurrent, with the possibility of patching up the past
by making amends in the present is kind of corny, and the logic in the narrative
lies somewhere in between fairy and tall tale. As a result, we get a diversion
as dumping ground for new technology tenets, a place to try out hair-rendering
software and vector graphic variables. It's pleasant enough for a while, but
never really adds up to anything substantive. If effects whiz-turned-director
Joe Johnston (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer) was hoping the animated animals
would help him over the film's dodgier dynamics, the bit-rate rhinos were indeed
the only thing this otherwise witless film had going for it.

The basic problem with the premise to Jumanji is that it's tied to a
roll of the dice. Indeed, the characters quickly learn that every time they
throw them bones, they are bound for some manner of titanic trouble. So you'd
think they'd learn from that and find a way to quickly play the game and get it
over with—especially after menacing flora and fauna torments them,
oversized stampedes chase them, and real rampaging indoor floods nearly drown
them. Yet our quartet of competitors (including two adults who really
should know better) simply sit back and let the danger confound and confuse
them. In an obvious bow to the wee ones in the audience, it is the children who
constantly come to the rescue, with a middle-aged Alan only thwarting a couple
of the movie's more concerning threats. So while the storyline is linear,
driving the plot toward the inevitable end (the final move of the game), the
interior aspects of the storyline are very choppy and vignette-like.

Such a scattered approach makes Jumanji like a bad roller-coaster
ride. We keep waiting for the next wave of fear and the characters to be faced
with another made-up menace, then once it arrives, pray for their escape and
wonder how they'll achieve said aim. There is no consistency to the tone, no
attempt to make the individuals truly three-dimensional. William's Alan has
daddy issues, yet they never really become a major factor in the movie. Sarah
poses as a psychic, but that little bit of character conceit is almost
immediately tossed aside, left to a single stupid joke and then relegated to the
biography back burner. You would never know that Peter and Judy just lost their
parents, since they go from grief to gamers in such a short span of time that
the entire lost family facet of the story is simply forgotten. Even the
puppy-dog romance that was budding between the younger versions of Hunt's and
Williams's characters now seems like a stunt, a obvious bow toward a "we
are eventually family" type of ending.

If made today, the film would certainly have better effects—or be
called Zathura, for that matter. It would
ditch the constant roll-and-wait ideal for something a little more fluid, and
the fatherhood storyline would be ditched for an issue more relevant to today's
kids (like, say, getting your Blackberry privileges revoked—ouch!). Ten
years apparently takes a lot out of a movie, and while Park still plays
well, Jumanji seems more jumbled and disjointed than before. It is still
a pleasant way to pass the time, just not a very artistically or substantively
satisfying one.

Since there is that new Allsburg title hitting the Multiplex, Sony has
decided to re-release Jumanji in a special, cardboard game board
deluxe edition. Spreading out an interesting if derivative set of extras
over two discs (many made at the time of the movie's production) and adding the
usual anamorphic widescreen image and Dolby Digital Stereo, the result is a
surprisingly lame presentation. The first flummoxing issue is the transfer.
Jumanji looks faded, soft, and incredibly murky in this rather poor
1.85:1 version. The 16x9 features are fine, but the CGI looks incredibly fake
under these less-than -ideal (and definitely not remastered)
circumstances. The sonic situation isn't much better. The 5.1 is not very
spatially ambient, and the only time the channels get any kind of attention is
when the animals make their left-to-right rampages. Considering how beloved this
otherwise average title is, you'd think Sony would spend a few quid and fix up
the picture. Instead, they let the decade-old Allsburg fend for itself, in lieu
of the fresh new film on the horizon.

As for the added content, it is a decidedly mixed bag. The commentary
consists of the effects crew discussing the ins and outs of 1s and 0s and it
doesn't take long before they de-evolve into geeky techno-speak. They know
little of the other production aspects of the film, so this one-sided discussion
grows dull very quickly. The rest of Disc One relies on games for the kiddies
(including a trivia-based riddle contest), a look at all the animals in the film
in something called "The Extreme Book of Nature," and a confusing
collection of magic tricks (HUH???) under the title "Ancient
Diversions." Disc Two offers up a making-of documentary (inflated EPK #1),
a production design featurette (glorified EPK #2) a special effects behind the
scenes (EPK #3), and a collection of storyboards, conceptual art, and production
stills. There is also a free ticket to see Zathura inside the case.

Since generations of juniors will be jonesing for this film, there is really
nothing negative this critic can say to dissuade you from potential ownership.
Just take this Buyer Beware with you as you head down to the brick-and-mortar
merchandise mart. If 10 years has tainted some of Jumanji's magic,
imagine what another decade brings. This is not a film meant to hold up over the
long haul. It was definitely of its time—and perhaps that's where it
should have stayed.